


Cold Comfort

by Amatara



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst, Autopsies, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-05
Updated: 2010-07-05
Packaged: 2017-10-10 09:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amatara/pseuds/Amatara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Autopsies are intimate things from whatever perspective. They're also very suited for long-overdue conversations. Albert Rosenfield, Dale Cooper, Maddy Ferguson, and the intricacies of coping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cold Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> **Thanks to:** Ingridmatthews, for the lovely and very helpful beta; and David Lynch, for the inspiration.  
> **Author's Note:** My attempt to explain why mid-to-late-second-season Albert is suddenly so much mellower than the razor-sharp, sarcastic Albert from before. In my head, this is set in the same universe as [Damaged Goods](http://archiveofourown.org/works/51630>), so could be read as a companion piece to that.

**   
**

Realism is an undervalued art. If he ever writes his memoirs... which of course he’ll never need to. Anything worth saying he says, no sugarcoating, to the person entitled. He figures there’ll be no clamor for repeats. But ifhe writes them, that’s what they’ll say.

The bodybag’s zipper is cold to the touch, his fingers stiff and uncooperative. Better be careful, or the blasted thing gets stuck for sure. It happened with the Palmer girl; he had to tear _her _bag open with a penknife. As if she didn’t want to be seen, he’d have said, if he were prone to flights of fancy, which of course he isn’t. That’s what you get in a town where violent death’s a stranger: things get rusty, then when they’re needed, they break.

The zipper gives reluctantly. Albert peels back the fabric to reveal the dead girl’s face, crinkled grey petals around ashen skin. The familiarity is more startling than he’d care to admit. Which of course he –

Ah, damn him.

No point in not saying it. Few acts in life can burn a human body into one’s mind quite like a two-hour postmortem can. Laura Palmer’s is particularly fresh in mind, and not just because he still has the black eye to show. That too, by the way, was realism come back to haunt him: the thing he tries his damnedest to teach every wide-eyed idiot he meets. The world’s not a whipped-cream-and-sugar treat, oh no. If the world had a shred of decency, it would consider it enough for a man to be spending the night in an empty stone-aged lab in a godforsaken burg, opening up yet another murdered kid after a four-hour drive out from Seattle. That in itself is plenty, thanks very much. But the world is never decent. The world likes to hit a person when he’s already neck-deep in crap. Like right now.

Right now, there’s a stubborn blind spot in the middle of his vision, blurring out Madeleine Ferguson’s cheek. It’s tiny; tiny enough to ignore if he tilts his head a little. It won’t be for long, though. The fact it just took him two seconds to remember the girl’s last name is as clear a sign of that as the telltale tingling in his neck.

Albert squints and pulls up Maddy’s eyelid, lets the needle hover. This, more than anything, makes him feel like an intruder here. Not the power drill or sawing through the ribcage, but the eyes. Always the eyes. Like he’s prying away what peace they had left.

His own eyes are stinging and he rubs hard, with a fury he can’t bring himself to feel. Ten minutes or so since the aura started; that gives him another five, maybe ten, till the pain sets in. Twenty more before it becomes debilitating, which puts him halfway through the autopsy. After that it’s just sucking it up until he’s done, then call a cab. Forget driving. Last time he tried _that _with a migraine, he ended up having to sleep it off in the car.

He keeps Maddy's eyes open while he takes the pictures, draws more samples, prepares his tools. Closing her eyes will be a relief, so he waits for it, draws it out as long as he can. Punishment maybe. A reminder, at least. The better he does his job, the fewer poor bastards there’ll be on his slab staring back at him.

Twenty-three minutes, in the end, before he folds and breaks out the aspirin. He’d take something strongerbut he needs his wits about him. Not that that’s going terrifically well. He’s not one for _déjà vu,_ but the sense of it is overwhelming: the eyes are Laura Palmer’s, and the cheeks, the shape of the collarbones. The breasts, when he slides the scalpel down, are Laura’s breasts, except for the pattern of bruises, mottled purple on white. The bruises always tell. 

Albert works fast, head down, eyes glued to the body. He’s dimmed all lights except the main one. The scalpel breaks off scattered pieces, each glint a knifepoint in his skull.

He reaches down to close Maddy’s eyes. Wide, milky, hardly human now, he could swear they’re focused on a spot above his shoulder, and he has to fight the temptation to turn and look. Oh, terrific. Not even halfway through and he’s already seeing phantoms. Either he’s further gone than he thinks or it’s Cooper rubbing off on him, Cooper with his babble of dancing dwarves and giants and mysteriously vanished rings. Except, of course, ifhe were Cooper, there’d be some Zen trick or other to rely on: wield the pain, let it sharpen his mind into a diamond or whatever half-baked, psychedelic metaphor applies. As himself, all he can do is grit his teeth and bear it, phantoms and all.

Or are they? That noise behind him, how long has it been there? The room’s ventilator is shot, rattling away like hamsters in a treadwheel, but this isn’t _that_. More erratic, like... wings, flapping? Some kind of big shadow at the far window, but it could be anything, cloud cover, branches swaying, anything. Still, his skin prickles like he’s being watched; cue half a million years of instinct that, right now, isn’t worth a damn thing.

The creak of the door is like a bombshell, and Albert wheels before he thinks better of it. Stars explode behind his eyes, but the shape in the doorway is unmistakable. He could have guessed. Who else would be taking a moonlit stroll to the morgue?

“Something out there, Albert?” Cooper, of course. Voice mild, curious, and as wide awake as when Albert ordered him off to sleep just an hour ago. Obviously thatwent down well.

“I thought there was.” Albert turns back, hiding a grimace. “Just a shadow, like a bird, scrabbling against the window. An owl, maybe… Charming, isn’t it, your local wildlife?” The alarm on Cooper’s face is vaguely unsettling. “You were supposed to be asleep. I thought all the answers came to you in dreams?”

“I wish they did, Albert,” Cooper says, with a faint half-smile. “So far, all my dreams brought me were riddles. Hence my hoping for more corporeal answers. Like yours.”

“And it couldn’t wait until morning?” Albert flinches at his own raised voice. “Play the tourist all you want, just let me do my job.” He turns back to the slab and away from the light. “The killer’s our man, by the way.”

“Madeline’s fingernail?” Cooper doesn't miss a beat.

“Letter ‘O’. Right there, plastic bag on the table.” He points Cooper to it, uses the moment to finish incising. _Slowly. _His head’s still killing him, but his hands are steady as always, and his brain’s still attached to the rest of him. So far, so good.

“Albert?” Cooper says again, holding something up towards him, and Albert resists the temptation to groan. “Are you taking these?” Damn. He forgot to put the aspirin bottle away. Well, it's not like he was expecting to entertain tonight.

“Yeah.” He throws in some sarcasm to quell the concern in Cooper’s face. “Hoped it’d help me bear idiocy, but no such luck. So far all it works for is migraine.”

Cooper nods, seems to take it at face value. “You feel up to this?” Quietly, and now Albert doesroll his eyes.

“Believe me, Cooper, like any sane person I’d prefer lounging on a tropical island instead, but I gather that’s not an option.” He tosses his head, which throws the critters at his temple into a frenzy. Not his best idea of tonight. Cooper blinks, makes a move as if to steady him, but a glare remedies that fast enough. “Enough chitchat for one day. You need the evidence while it’s fresh, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.” And at least Cooper, being Cooper, wouldn’t question that.

“Good. Now, pick yourself a nice comfy chair and get out of my way. Talk if you want, but talk quietly.”

“I will, Albert.” Cooper drifts past him, not to a chair, but to the opposite end of the slab. “Unless –” Hopeful tone, and Albert finds himself bracing for impact. “Unless you let me lend you a hand. Put me to work, then maybe I can put my mind at ease as well.”

Apart from the obvious ploy to go easy on him_, _that sounds dangerously like Cooper-code for _I’m going stir-crazy. _Albert would happily ignore the former, but the latter would be a bad idea. “Fine,” he says. “But you don’t touch anything unless I tell you. First order of business: coffee. I know it’s poison in this place, but I’m not in a mood to be picky.”

Cooper nods and makes a beeline for the exit. Albert takes advantage of the lull to get his wind back and prop himself up against the table. The pressure in his skull's still relentless, and he hunts it down with his fingertips. His stomach cramps half-heartedly. At least he can't lose his dinner because he didn't _have_ dinner. Halleluja for that.

A muffled thump signals the return of Cooper and coffee, and before Albert can react there’s a cold weight against the nape of his neck. He gulps back a curse, clamps down on icy plastic and a towel and the brush of Cooper’s fingertips. Fucking sweet relief, and he's melting into it before he even remembers he's supposed to protest.

“Good?”

“Mmm.” Halfway between a grunt and something far less dignified. Cooper’s smile is a cautious thing, tucked away behind dark-smudged eyes.

“You see? Twin Peaks medical facilities do have some redeeming qualities, Albert.”

“So they got a freezer. Great. Who do I nominate for the Nobel prize?” Albert snorts feebly, tries to muster indignation but comes up short. Beside him, Cooper sips his own coffee with what sounds like a sigh of bliss.

“All right, Albert.” The plunk of the mug on the table serves as exclamation mark. “Let’s have it.”

He groans. “Let’s have _what?_”

“You’re off your game; have been since you arrived. That’s a rarity for you. In fact, I don’t recall any time in the past when–”

“Cooper, there is a five-ton elephant sitting in my neck, butting me in the head with a pickaxe. And you’re asking why I’m ‘off my game’?”

“From where I'm standing, Albert, that’s a symptom, not a cause.” Still with that maddening calm, the type that impresses the hell out of most people, but makes Albert just want to slug the man instead.

“Oh, so you read minds, too?” And now Albert is sounding like a spoiled kid, but screw that. “Shouldn’t you be thinking about the case, instead of –”

“You’re as much a part of this case now as I am, Albert.” Cooper says it in complete sincerity, which is almost too absurd to be true because _that’s the fucking point_, isn’t it? But for all his usual clairvoyance, Cooper doesn’t even seehe’s hit the jackpot. “Now, there’s obviously something bothering you, and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that bottling things up has a way of backfiring, so...”

“Oh yeah? Well, it used to work pretty well for me.” Albert spits the words out like they’re acid, and the look on Cooper’s face almost makes it worth the headache. “This used to be just a case, Cooper. Now it’s a case _and_ people, scared and confused and screwed up people all hollering for attention. And you know what? Ican’t give it to them. There’s a reason why I’m not out in the field, except when, God forbid, you ask me to, and there’s a reason why I am how I am out here, and it works just fine. Then youhave to get all crazy about this place, setting the good example, have to start showing you care, and before I know, I’m a bastard for not doing the same.”

Sheer stubbornness gets him to the end of the sentence, but no further. When he comes up for air, Cooper is staring at him like he’s just grown wings and a tail. “Albert, I... You have to believe I never intended that.” His words are measured in teaspoons of caution. “In fact, I never even consideredthat you would –”  

“Yeah, well, I’m sure you didn’t,” Albert says, and now Cooper's distress is unmistakable. “I can cope with a lot of craziness, Coop. _In my own way_.” His vision is bleeding to white, and for a second, he actually wonders if his knees are going to give. Either that, or have that critter from Alien come popping out straight of his skull; he isn’t sure which he prefers. “Hell, I don’t even mind having to explain to small-town yokels like Truman whyit is that I’m not Mr. Happy Do-Good around here. I just –”

“All right, Albert. All right.” Cooper’s voice is low and hypnotic, and it must be one of his Buddhist tricks that suddenly has Albert sitting down, on a chair that wasn’t there before, eyes about level with Maddy’s face. Albert grits his teeth, dismayed to find his shirt sticking to him like he just _swam _over from Seattle. But his head is clearing, and he’d almost wish it wasn’t, if only to avoid facing those too-keen eyes.

“This is how it works, Cooper,” he says, wearily. “I’m just the guy with the knife. I cut them open, then I tie them up in a neat little package and I let them go. Except thanks to your little Twin Peaks obsession–”

“You can’t let this go?” A hand tightens on his shoulder.  

He starts to nod, thinks better of it. “Then, to top the cake, the latest victim you roll in here looks exactly like the first one, and any clue you come up with sounds enough like hocus-pocus it’s like a bad ripoff of _The Twilight Zone_. This whole thing’s insane, and I don’t know how you fucking deal with it, Cooper, I don’t...” Trailing off, he finds his coffee cup still on the table, folds his hands around it. Still warm, which is more comforting than it has any right to be.  

Cooper is a pale statue beside him, eyes fixed on some spot between the floor and Albert’s knees. “I suppose…” Long pause, like he’s mulling it over. “I deal with it by talking to people. By connecting to the reality of this place, letting it anchor me. That’s the only way I _can _deal with it, but I –” He takes a deep breath, the kind that makes Albert's heart clench a little. “It worked for me, so I didn’t stop to think –”

“– that the average mortal might not be like you?” he says, sparing Cooper the trouble. “Well, what’s done is done.”

Cooper blinks, as if shaking himself out of some kind of dream or head trip or whatever damn thing it is Cooper’s in when he’s looking like that. “I don't know, Albert. Perhaps you can still get some good out of this. Make some friends here.” He raises a hand at Albert’s groan of protest. “At least stop making new enemies. There are good people out here, if you give them a chance.”

“I know that.” Well, yeah, of course he does. That's part of the problem. “Just do me a favour, will you? Don’t put me beside a campfire with Deputy Poodlebrains and make me join in sing-alongs. We all got our limits.”

“I won’t, Albert.” Cooper gives him a thin smile.

Albert glances at Maddy, looking even deader for the slice he peeled out of her. Enough of this. He’s still got a job to do. He pushes himself up from the chair, relieved when Cooper makes no move to assist. “You still want to do this, Cooper? Because if you do, it’s gotta be –”

“Two minutes, Albert.” Cooper's tone brooks no dissent. “Just tell me where I find spare clothes to wear."

Albert points and picks the ice-bag back up, thinking _what the hell. _He takes measured breaths with his head low and his hip against the table, while Cooper shrugs out of his jacket and into lab coat and gloves. Out of uniform he looks strangely fragile, and Albert finds himself groping for something to offer that doesn’t sound trite.

“We’ll find him,” he says, for lack of anything better. “The bastard who did this.” He straightens to find that he’s still in working order, not cracking at the seams just yet. Well, of course he isn’t. Neither of them are.

Cooper gives a little shudder of his own, trails gloved fingertips across Maddy’s wrist. “I don’t know, Albert. Until today, I was convinced Ben Horne was our man. Now, frankly… I’m out of options.”

Albert sighs, beckons for Cooper to extend his arm. “Well, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why _I’m_ here, more to the point. One way or another, we’ll get your answers.” His voice is firm as he palms the shears, guides Cooper’s hand around them, into the right angle. “Now shush and cut – right there.”

 

 


End file.
